Apple Cheddar Waffles

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Chelsea

Although I object to the idea of swapping all of your usual décor with pumpkins and corncobs the moment calendars proclaim it’s the first day of fall, by the time mid-October rolls around I’m both cool with the harvest theme and starting to crave richer, belly-warming food. I have such ideas about bread, and stews, and short-ribs, and roasted everything…

Los Angeles is making this hard lately. With temperatures in the 90s during two of the past three weekends, it’s difficult to convince myself to cook anything, much less wax poetic about its warming spices and satisfying heartiness. My bedroom feels like the inside of a dryer. I might have fleeting dreams about fluffy, toasty, steaming biscuits mounded with chili, but all I can truly imagine consuming is a series of popsicles and frozen grapes.

But I will say, if it’s cool enough where you are that the thought of using heating implements in your kitchen doesn’t throw you into depression, you should make these waffles immediately. I first made them a month or so ago when it didn’t feel like Dante might mistake our kitchen for one of the circles of Hell. They were so good – fluffy and light from their yeasted batter, crisp and burnished with crackling edges of melted cheese – that it was only a week or two before we had to make them again. Like the grilled cheese sandwiches I pushed on you last year, they pull from the classic combination of cheddar cheese and apple pie. A wedge of salivation-inducing cheese against the sweet tartness of apple desserts is a worthy experiment in many cases, and here, soft, tender apple bits and pockets of melted cheese folded into a crisp waffle drowning in maple syrup is a combination you’re going to want to make all season, if the seasons would ever straighten themselves out. And if you simply aren’t enthused by a recipe that advertises itself with a pile of apples and sharp-as-you-can-get cheddar cheese, I’m not sure we can stay friends.

These start from my basic yeasted beer batter waffles recipe, which is adapted from King Arthur Flour. You can use milk instead of beer if you must, but between the yeast and the heat most of the alcohol is processed out, and the slightly bitter flavor of dark beer is such a welcome addition, balancing the rich cheese and tart apples. The first time I made these I was concerned about the apple pieces cooking all the way through in the short time they are enfolded in the waffle iron, but I needn’t have worried. They are in small enough pieces that they will cook. I like to leave the skins on for extra tartness, but you can peel them first if you prefer. Apples and cheese play well in both sweet and savory directions, so while I think a glug of maple syrup – we like to warm it up with a pinch of red pepper flakes for a little kick – makes these a complete meal, I could also see them providing a perfect raft for a moist thigh of roasted or fried chicken, or even piled with a fresh kale salad studded with walnuts and dried cherries.

Apple Cheddar Waffles

Loosely adapted from King Arthur Flour

Makes about six 7-inch waffles

2-2½ hours (45 minutes active time)

1½ cups (12 ounces) lukewarm dark beer, such as a stout or a porter

1½ teaspoons active dry yeast

3 tablespoons maple syrup

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) melted butter, cooled

1 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 green apple, diced into ¼ inch-½ inch chunks (1⅓ – 1½ cups, approximately)

1 generous cup grated sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese

In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, or a small microwave safe bowl, heat the beer until just warm to the touch. Add yeast and let them mingle for 5-10 minutes. The yeast will foam up considerably, thanks to the extra sugars and yeast already in the beer.
While the yeast proofs, whisk together the cooled melted butter, the maple syrup, the salt, and the eggs in a large bowl. Be sure there’s room for the batter to expand.
Add the beer and yeast mixture and whisk to combine, then add the flour 1 cup at a time, whisking to combine thoroughly. Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the apple chunks and the cheese. Stir well, as the cheese may want to stick together; we want it evenly incorporated.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it on the counter for 1½-2 hours (how fast it rises and bubbles will depend on how warm your kitchen is, but longer rise = deeper flavor). The mixture will develop lethargic and then more energetic bubbles, and begin to smell quite bready.
Once it has had a chance to rise and is covered with a near-consistent layer of bubbles, either stow in the refrigerator overnight, or preheat your waffle iron!
Drop the batter in generous ⅔ cup batches onto a preheated, greased waffle iron (or whatever capacity your iron can handle). Close the lid and cook for the recommended amount of time, or until the waffle is crisp on the outside and deeply golden, with dark crisp cheese lace protruding. Ours took about 7 minutes per waffle. (If you refrigerated your batter for a few hours or overnight, be sure to bring it back up to room temperature before cooking)
Serve hot with your choice of sweet pourable topping. We like maple syrup warmed with a pinch of red chili flakes in it, for a little kick. If you need to keep the waffles warm, stow them on a wire rack over a baking sheet in a 250F oven until you are ready to eat.

Cheddar Dill Twists

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Chelsea

It seems fitting that I should do my first post along with the Twelve Loaves bakers during a month that celebrates cheese. On any given day, you can find between three and six different kinds of cheese in the tiny drawer in my refrigerator. My last two posts have featured it as a key ingredient, and in both I’ve waxed eloquent about using not just some, but MOAR. I seriously love cheese. It’s the primary reason I could never go completely vegan. I could give up meat with very little trouble (though I would miss bacon, I must admit). I could wave a cheerful goodbye to fish, to beef, to chicken, and stock my cupboards with vegetable broth and my freezer with coconut based ice cream. I already use soy rather than regular milk on my cereal and in my weekend chai. But I would have serious problems bidding farewell to cheese.

Even though I know this isn’t true – they had their ingredient chosen long before I came into the picture – it feels almost like the Twelve Loaves baking group planned this month’s post just for me. Bake with cheese. Yes. I. Will. Cooking with cheese is exciting because the ingredient offers such variety. Do you want something mild, or so sharp it makes your mouth water? Do you want a familiar flavor, or something tart or funky or stinky like last month’s socks? And then there’s texture. Cheese already runs the gamut from so soft it seems already melted to the firmness of parmesan that requires a knife point to dismantle. Add to that the different reactions it has to heat: some cheeses sigh into liquid. Some pull into foot-long strings. Some – and this is one of my favorite results – some flatten and solidify and transform into crunchy little cheese crisps suitable for nothing fancier than jamming into your mouth as quickly as you can.

With all of these options to work with, I was surprised by how quickly I landed on a choice. I’ve been playing around with a pairing of dill and cheddar, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to showcase it. Dill goes really well with yogurt, so for a different source of fat and moisture, I decided to use some thick, tangy Greek yogurt instead of butter in my dough. The tartness of the yogurt would be nice with the rich sharpness of the cheddar. And since I like to be fancy, I decided to make little twists, rather than a standard loaf.

Guys, these are definitely the right thing to do. The dill-cheddar-yogurt trio is a chamber group on a good night. They bounce off each other in such a lovely way. But it can’t be denied that the star here is the cheese. It melts into little orange pockets while the dough turns into bread, and the smell of it while cooking makes a better homecoming than much else I can think of. I made one tray of twists with cheese sprinkled on top and one without, just to see which was better. As you might expect, more cheese won the day. It drips over the edges into crisp little crackered pieces you can snap off and crunch through before you dive into the main event.

I had the idea that these would make fantastic extra-large tea sandwiches: halve them into long pieces, toast lightly, slather with cream cheese, then layer with long strips of cucumber. Cheese on cheese is rarely a bad thing, and the cucumber would nod to the dill and provide a crisp freshness and a lightness for the perfect spring lunch. Alas, when I reached into the fridge drawer jammed with vegetables, not cheese, my cucumbers were past their prime. So I had to settle for cream cheese alone, with a side of Caesar salad. I can’t say I ended up disappointed.

Serving suggestion: these are perfect all on their own straight out of the oven. But they do make a nice, roll-sized vehicle for anything sausage shaped, and I can’t see many people objecting to using this as the base for a good solid cheesesteak sandwich. If you really wanted to get decadent, the twists could be split lengthwise, spread with a garlic butter, and broiled into a dreamy take on garlic bread.

To capitalize on the tea sandwiches idea, you could make them even smaller, dividing into 16 or even 24 pieces, and creating miniature twists to serve as part of an appetizer spread with the requisite cream cheese and cucumber filling. I haven’t tested this smaller size so I can’t be sure how much to reduce the baking time – start with 12 minutes and go from there.

Cheddar Dill Twists

Makes 8 sandwich sized twists

2 teaspoons yeast

1 tablespoon brown sugar

½ cup lukewarm milk

½ cup plain, unsweetened Greek yogurt (you could use regular yogurt too, but you might need additional flour)

1 large egg

2 – 2½ cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons finely minced fresh dill

1 cup grated cheddar cheese, if not topping the twists. 1-½ cups grated cheddar, divided, if topping the twists

In a bowl or a 2-cup glass measuring cup, combine the yeast, brown sugar, and lukewarm milk. Stir, then set aside for 5-10 minutes until bubbly and smelling of bread.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, or another large bowl, stir together the egg and the yogurt (use the paddle attachment, if you are working with a stand mixer). Add in the milk and yeast mixture, stirring well, then add 2 cups of the flour, the salt, the dill, and 1 cup of the cheddar cheese. Mix until the dough comes together into a rough ball.
Switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook and set to medium, if you are using a stand mixer. If you are mixing by hand or with a wooden spoon, turn the dough out onto a floured board. In either case, knead into a smooth, slightly sticky ball with some elasticity. If it seems too sticky to work with, add more flour 2 tablespoons at a time. This unfortunate stickiness may increase as the cheese softens; don’t despair.
Plop the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl (I just spray down the sides of my stand mixer bowl and flip the dough ball over a few times), cover tightly with plastic wrap, and leave it to rise for 60-90 minutes, until doubled. Punch it down by gently pressing your knuckles into the center, then let it rest for 5 minutes.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and divide into 8 equal pieces. Using the palms of your hands, roll into 18-inch long ropes. As you roll, the middle will get thin and the ends will plump up. Prevent this by pushing outwards toward the ends of the rope (so your hands are moving slightly away from each other) as you roll.
Fold the rope over into a long horseshoe shape, then twist or “braid” it by lifting one side over the other in 3 or 4 tight twists, as in the photos above. When you reach the ends, crimp them together and tuck them under for neatness.
Transfer each twist to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, settling them at least 2 inches apart, and let rise again for 45-60 minutes, until noticeably plumped but not quite doubled.
At least 30 minutes before cooking, preheat the oven to 350F.
When you are ready to bake, if you want to top the twists with cheese, sprinkle the remaining ½ cup of cheddar in equal amounts over each – this will be about a tablespoon per twist.
Bake at 350F for 18 minutes, until the twists are golden and the top layer of cheese is melted and slightly crisp.
Cool for 5-10 minutes, if you can, before removing to a rack or directly to your mouth.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess and runs smoothly with the help of Heather of girlichef, and the rest of our fabulous bakers.

Our host this month is Robin from A Shaggy Dough Story, and our theme is CHEESE. For more bread recipes, visit the #TwelveLoaves Pinterest board, or check out last month’s mouthwatering selection of #TwelveLoaves enter last month’s Italian Breads!

Buttermilk Goat Cheese Biscuits from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
Casatiello from Cake Duchess
Cheddar Chive Bread from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
Cheddar Dill Twists from blackberry eating in late september
Cheese Babka from Hostess At Heart
Cheese Soda bread from Ma che ti sei mangiato
Cream Cheese and Cherry Buns from girlichef
Feta & Olive Swirls from The Bread She Bakes
Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread) from A Shaggy Dough Story
Pimento Cheese Straws from Kudos Kitchen By Renee

If you’d like to bake along with us this month, share your CHEESE bread using hashtag #TwelveLoaves!

Apricot Coffeecake Ring #TwelveLoaves

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Chelsea

Things get a little lax in the summer. Example: you’re not getting a sauce this month. What can I say? I’ve been on vacation! I’ll make it up to you in August, though, along with a slew of other delectable options I’ve got pending. I was determined, however, not to fall behind in my Twelve Loaves baking. In my haste to stay on schedule, I merely glanced at the beautiful apricots gleaming up from Lora’s bread this month, and assumed these gorgeous fleshly globes were the theme of July’s assignment.

Turns out the theme was “summer fun.” Well. I think I’m still glad I went with apricots. Their beautiful swelling cheeks and slight fuzzy skins remind me of a healthy summery glow. After a week of beaches and bronzed bodies, the peachy simplicity of apricots seemed like the right move.

I’ve been auditioning yeasted coffeecake recipes for a while now, sometimes ending up with a stunner, sometimes with something that merits a revisit, and sometimes with something that wasn’t a yeasted coffeecake at all. But for this, I turned to the place I should have looked from the very beginning: Baking Illustrated. This hefty volume from the brains and kitchens of the Cook’s Illustrated crew does all the heavy lifting for me, and if I’m ambitious enough to read the whole story, tells me why and how each item came to be, from a food science, aesthetics, and taste-bud angle.

This loaf is slightly adapted from their yeasted coffeecake recipe with an orange-apricot filling. I omitted the orange, used fresh rather than dried apricots, and opted to forgo the heavy streusel and icing in favor of a light sprinkle of almonds and a bit of coarse sugar for an appealing crunch. I took their suggested horseshoe shape and swung it all the way into a circle for a pretty golden ring oozing jammy splotches.

When this came out of the oven, I – forgive me the overshare – just about drooled right on it. The apricot filling escapes in spots, bubbling and thickening like the filling at the edges of a pie. The dough itself, crusty on top with its sugared almond adornments, is burnished and soft and puffy and gorgeous. Describing the creation to his parents the evening we sampled it, N. called it a giant bearclaw, and though the loaf is a bit denser than a doughnut, the effect of the snipped dough with caramelized filling oozing through is similar.

Are you sold? Let me tell you one more thing. This cake is essentially a two-day project. I’m serious. But don’t run off just yet! This is actually an advantage for a summer loaf. Because it has so much butter in it, and a pair of eggs to boot, it takes this dough a long time to rise. For the same reasons, it has to be chilled after its initial rise before you can really work with it at all. It’s quite similar to brioche in that way. But this is an advantage because it means you are not switching on the oven in the middle of the day, when your hair is already plastered to your forehead and you cannot bear to be in the kitchen another instant. It’s a mix in the morning, a long rise in a preheated house, and then you can shove it in the fridge and ignore it until early the following morning, when you finally bake. It means a little planning ahead, but I think it works out better in the long run.

Besides, when you taste this, with its sugared crunch and soft elastic chew and golden sunshine-y tart-sweet apricot, I think you’ll decide it was worth it.

Happy midsummer. I wish you heaps of fun.

Apricot Coffeecake Ring

Adapted from Baking Illustrated

Makes one 8-10 inch ring

Note: this is, unless you are willing to get up very early in the morning, a two day baking process. I think it’s totally worth it, but be sure to give yourself sufficient time to execute it.

Note: because this is a very rich dough, it is also very soft and sticky. It will be difficult to work with by hand, so I’m only including directions for a stand mixer.

Dough:

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3 tablespoons warm milk

¼ cup sugar

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

2 – 2½ cups bread flour (you may not need the entire amount)

1 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick, or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened but not melted, cut into small chunks

Apricot filling:

1½ cups peeled, chopped apricots (for me, this was 5 apricots)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon rum, optional

Topping:

1 egg white

1 teaspoon milk or cream

2-3 tablespoons raw sliced almonds

1-2 tablespoons coarse sugar (I used turbinado)

Sprinkle the yeast and a pinch of the sugar over the warm milk in the bowl of your stand mixer, stir to dissolve a bit, and let sit for 5-10 minutes until the yeast is bubbly.
Add the remaining sugar, the eggs, and the vanilla, and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until combined.
Now, add the salt and 1 ¼ cups of the flour, and again mix on low speed until the flour is incorporated.
Increase the speed by one notch so you are at medium-low, and begin adding the butter one chunk at a time, beating until each chunk is incorporated before adding the next. This will take a few minutes, but it allows them to disperse evenly into the dough. When all the butter is incorporated, the mixture will look like thick cake batter.
With all the butter incorporated, replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and add 1 cup of flour. Run the mixer at medium-low for about 5 minutes, kneading until the dough is soft and fairly smooth. If it looks disastrously sticky or does not seem to be coming together, you can add the remaining flour a tablespoon or two at a time, but be sure you knead thoroughly between each addition. This is supposed to be a soft dough.
After you’ve kneaded for 5 minutes on medium-low, increase the mixer speed to medium and knead an additional 2 minutes. According to Baking Illustrated, this tightens up the dough a bit.
Cover the dough tightly with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm spot until it doubles in size. This should take 3-4 hours (it’s a rich, heavy dough; it will take the yeast a while to work through all that butter!).
When the dough has doubled, punch it down by depressing your fist gently into its center, replace the plastic wrap, and stow it in the fridge overnight (Baking Illustrated’s precise instructions are “at least 4 or up to 24 hours”).
When you are ready to make the filling, which also needs to chill thoroughly before being added to the dough, heat a medium pot of water to boiling. Score the bottoms (flower end, not stem end) of each apricot by cutting a shallow x through the skin and just barely into the flesh with a sharp knife. Plunge the scored apricots into the boiling water and leave them for about 60 seconds. Then, remove them, drain them, and set them aside until they are cool enough to handle.
Using a small knife, carefully peel back the skins of the apricots starting at the x you’ve scored into the bottom. The skins may already be peeling away, and should separate from the flesh easily. If they prove particularly stubborn, stick them back in the boiling water for another 30 seconds.
Remove the pits and chop the peeled apricots, then put them into a pot with the brown sugar and rum, and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until they collapse into a glorious pulpy mess. Remove from heat and pulse the mixture in a food processor until almost smooth. Or, if you are lazy like me, mash it up with a potato masher. Either way, once your apricots are almost smooth, stow them in the refrigerator until quite cold.
When you are ready to shape the coffeecake, remove the chilled dough from the refrigerator and gently dump and scrape it out onto a well floured board. Pat the dough out into a roughly 6×5 inch rectangle, lightly flour the top, then use a rolling pin and some elbow grease to flatten the dough into a smooth, 15×9 inch rectangle (it will be about ¼ inch thick).
Spread the cold apricot filling over this large rectangle of dough, leaving at least a ½ inch border on all edges.
Using both hands and starting with one of the longer edges, roll the dough up tightly into a long log. Seal the seam securely by pinching the dough, then coax the log into a circle and pinch the ends together to join them in a ring shape. During this process some of the filling will likely ooze out; don’t worry too much about it.
Transfer the ring of dough to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. With a pair of kitchen scissors, snip about halfway through the log at 2-inch intervals. Again, you will get some lovely orange ooze. No worries; this will get lovely and caramelized when it bakes. Just drape some plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel over the whole thing and let it rise again until slightly puffed; about 90 minutes.
30 minutes before you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F with a rack in the middle.
When the loaf has risen again, beat the egg white and milk together and brush it over the exposed dough evenly. Sprinkle the sliced almonds and coarse sugar over the loaf, and then slide it into the oven and bake until deeply golden and registering around 190F on an instant-read thermometer. This should take 25-35 minutes.
Cool at least 20 minutes on a wire rack (just slide the parchment straight from sheet tray to cooling rack) before slicing and serving.
This cake is amazing warm or cold, and though I suspect it would last a week wrapped in foil and refrigerated, we scarfed it within 3 days.

Photo Friday

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Chelsea

Sometimes I worry that I’ve killed my yeast.

Sometimes I don’t.

Photo Friday

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Chelsea

Rosemary and black pepper sourdough, before and after…

Pizza and Beer

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Chelsea

Sometimes, a week calls for pizza. But you don’t want the delivery variety dripping with grease and lazy with a smattering of mix-n-match toppings. You want something fresher. Better. You want the feel of dough you can stretch under your hands and control over the size and shape of the pie and choice in the quality and variety of ingredients.

Homemade pizza.

N. and I have often talked about pizza memories, and how, when we were kids, pizza just wasn’t the same without a side of root beer. It had to be in one of those hard plastic molded glasses, and it had to be with a clear straw. And sometimes, you forgot you’d ordered root beer instead of Coke or Pepsi, and that first gulp with its spicy depth would be a tremendous surprise.

As we got older, the “root” part of the equation melted, and suddenly it was pizza and beer, plain and simple, one of the mother food and beverage combinations (is that a thing? Like mother sauces? It should be. After all, beer is the third most popular beverage worldwide, and variations on pizza have been around since ancient Greece).

As I thought my way through this pizza plan this week, I wondered whether they had to be separate. I mean, yeast makes bread dough and beer possible. Beer is liquid, and there seemed no logical reason why it couldn’t be substituted for the water I’d ordinarily use to make a pizza crust.

Once this idea was lodged in my head, it wouldn’t go away. This just seemed too perfect. Beer and pizza, kneaded together – a truly complete meal.

Even though beer is essentially water with yeast and flavorings, I wasn’t sure what would happen when I mixed the two. I heated a bottle of amber ale in the microwave with a couple teaspoons of honey, just until it was body temperature. When I added the yeast and engaged the lightest of stirs, the whole measuring cup erupted with bubbles and I had a head at least three inches high. This slowly collapsed, but I took it to mean the yeast was satisfied with its new spa treatment.

I used a combination of bread flour and whole wheat flour, and produced a spectacularly nutty tasting dough that was also the stickiest I’ve ever worked with. It slithered and dripped off of my stand mixer’s dough hook and plopped thickly into the oiled bowl I coaxed it into, and I crossed my fingers and hoped that after its six hour chill in the fridge it turned into pizza crust.

When I liberated it and faced it again, it wasn’t the easiest dough to work with, but it did work. It wouldn’t deign to be tossed like a pizzeria pie, but I stretched and spread and pushed it across a cookie sheet liberally spread with cornmeal, and it turned into a rustic, bubbly, delicious crust. Topped with mozzarella, sausage, and sun-dried tomatoes, it baked into a glorious symphony of assertive flavors. We sprinkled on a few leaves of fresh basil while it was still steaming hot, and declared it one of my best homemade pizzas. This is a sticky, wet dough, but it works. I’m going to make it again and tweak the quantities of flour and olive oil, but trust me: this is worth fooling with for the flavor alone. The beer comes through right at the end of each bite as a deep yeasty earthiness. It lends the tiniest bit of bitter flavor that contrasts really well with the fatty sausage and tart sun-dried tomato. And really, why shouldn’t it? It’s beer, and this is pizza. They were made to be together.

Beer-crust pizza

12 oz. beer (I used an amber ale. I think a darker brew would be even better)

2 tsp honey

2 tsp yeast

¼ cup olive oil

2 ½ cups bread flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp salt

¼-½ tsp black pepper

Heat the beer and honey in the microwave (or a small saucepan) until the liquid is body temperature – you should feel only the slightest heat when you dip in a curious finger. This took about 45 seconds in the microwave for me. It will take longer if your beer has been refrigerated.

Swirl the mixture to distribute the honey, then sprinkle the yeast over the surface and set it aside for 5 minutes. If you stir the yeast in, you will get a tremendous amount of foam on the surface, so in case of overflow I think it’s better to just let it sit.

While you wait for the yeast to perk up, combine the flours, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer.

When the yeast and beer have married to create a thick foam, stir in the olive oil, then add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients. Using the paddle attachment (if you are using a stand mixer), combine at low speed just until ingredients come together into a rough, uneven dough. Replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and knead on medium-low speed for 5-7 minutes.

This dough will not pass the windowpane test. It will not even stay together particularly well. It will seem like an exercise in futility and disaster, and you will be sorely tempted to add more flour. But if you resist, and plop it into an oiled bowl, and cover that bowl with plastic-wrap and leave it in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours, it will turn into something more like normal pizza dough. I promise.

90 minutes before you intend to bake, take the bowl of dough out of the fridge and set it on the counter to finish rising and come to room temperature. After this time has passed, and the dough is considerably increased in size (it may not quite double, unless your counter is quite warm), stretch it to your desired shape – it easily makes a thick 9×13” rectangular crust, and might be coaxed into 2 medium sized, somewhat thin round crusts – on a cornmeal or flour speckled board or tray. I just doused my cookie tray with cornmeal and pressed and pushed the dough directly on it until I was happy with the shape.

When adequately stretched, add toppings and bake in a preheated 450F oven for 12-15 minutes, or until puffed, crisp, and golden. Wait 5 minutes before you cut it, to give the cheese time to congeal just a little.

We ate this in embarrassingly large squares and left enough in leftovers to serve as lunch the next day. Cut slightly smaller and for slightly less voracious eaters (or if you add a side salad), this would be an adequate dinner for 4.